


i never thought about love when i thought about home

by wolfchester



Series: i set a fire in a blackberry field [1]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Violence, based on a lot of the comics and my own imagination, natasha's origin story the way i see it, warning for dubious non-explicit sexual content (very brief mention)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29854011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchester/pseuds/wolfchester
Summary: natasha’s confession tape, 1991. the birth of the black widow.
Series: i set a fire in a blackberry field [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194869
Kudos: 7





	i never thought about love when i thought about home

**Author's Note:**

> if this story seems familiar, that's because it's an updated version of the first chapter of the work 'i set a fire in a blackberry field' that i posted on here a few years ago. i've since decided to delete that work and repost it as a series, not one individual multi-chapter. this here is the first work in that series !!
> 
> this series will be 17 parts long and follow the story of bucky and natasha through the years - from the moment they meet in the red rooms, to the post-endgame world. i love these two so much and i'm so excited to tell their story the way i see it.
> 
> this series will be based on both comics canon and the movies, but will also include a heffttyyyyy dose of my own imagination (as all good fic should !!). i hope you all enjoy xoxox
> 
> (p.s. all the titles in this series come from songs by the national, and have also been inspired by poetry from charles bukowski and e.e. cummings. this story's title is from 'bloodbuzz ohio')

** i never thought about love when i thought about home **

_i still owe money to the money to the money i owe_

_i never thought about love when i thought about home_

_the floors are falling out from everybody i know  
  
_

_i’m on a blood buzz, yes i am  
  
_

\- _bloodbuzz ohio_ \- the national -

  
  


_escape from the black widow spider_

_is a miracle as great as art._

_what a web she can weave_

_slowly drawing you to her_

_she’ll embrace you_

_then when she’s satisfied_

_she’ll kill you_

_still in her embrace_

_and suck the blood from you._

_-_ (an excerpt from) _the escape -_ charles bukowski _-_

* * *

**18TH MARCH 1991 - N. Romanova - Confession Tape - PROPERTY OF S.H.I.E.L.D.**

_“...Miss Romanova. If you could start at the date of your birth, please.”_

_“Yes, sir. My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. I was born on the 22nd February 1928 in Stalingrad, USSR. My mother’s name was Jelena and my father’s name was Vanya. I have no siblings. I was orphaned in December 1932.”_

Natalia Romanova’s first memory is of fire.

Raging, furious, vengeful fire. White-hot. Life-altering.

It began in the roof of their home on a little back street of Stalingrad. 

(Exactly how the flames started is still a mystery, although with decades worth of retrospect she wonders if it was not an accident. The Romanova’s are descended from Russian royalty. She knows now her father was tangled up in dangerous politics with dangerous men, and her mother likely knew some of his secrets, whispers of violence and murder and bribery spilled out across pillowcases in the late evenings. Perhaps he became too entangled and someone thought his life wasn’t worth the risk it held.)

As a child not yet five years old, the memory of this night is fuzzy around the edges. All young memories are. Like an old photograph or poorly drawn illustration. She can’t remember the sound of crackling wood or the sure wet feeling the snow must have made when it soaked through her stockings, but she does remember this: licks of orange reaching up curtains; choking smoke; Mama’s face streaming with tears; Papa nowhere to be found; voice hoarse from shrieking. Then the faint feeling of falling and being caught in a stranger’s arms. Looking back at a burning house and screaming, screaming. 

The strange man with the beard leading her away from the fire and into a warm car. Falling asleep.

_“At age four and ten months, I was placed in the custody of Soviet soldier Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov. Ivan was my foster father until I reached the age of nine.”_

The strange man’s name turned out to be Ivan Petrovich, and he was kind but firm with young Natalia. She spent four years living with Ivan in a small apartment overlooking a river. She went to school. Learned her times tables and Russian history and how to read. Ivan took her on strolls through parks, read her bedtime stories at night. On her birthdays, he let her eat ice cream for dinner. It was like she had a real family all over again. 

Then, at nine, she bled for the first time. 

Over breakfast a week later, Ivan informed her that she would then be attending a special school for special girls. Natalia asked the usual questions: where is it? for how long? who will my teachers be? will I still get to stay with you, father?

Ivan’s responses were short and vague. “You do not even know how extraordinary you are, my darling. This school is the best thing for you.”

The next day, they packed up her small arrangement of things. A worn photograph of her mama and papa standing on the front doorstep of the house that burnt down. A small teddy with its ear chewed off. A little suitcase filled with a few dresses, new black leather shoes, and a cosy sweater for when it gets cold.

“Everything else you need the school will provide,” Ivan said. She trusted him. 

She shouldn’t have.

_“Ivan made a deal with the KGB, where he had previously worked, when he was first given custody of me. When I began to menstruate - when I was old enough - I was to be handed over to the Kremlin to be trained with twenty-eight young orphaned girls as a spy for my country.”_

_“And were you aware that this is what you would be doing at this so-called special school?”_

_“No, I was not. I did not realise what was happening until I had been at the Red Rooms for a number of weeks. I was young.”_

_“So would you say you consented to your training?”_

_“In a sense, no.”_

The day he said goodbye, Natalia felt like she was losing a second father. Although she was young — and although Ivan promised her that he’d visit sometimes — she knew this was not ordinary. This was not the way things are supposed to go. You were not supposed to lose your parents, and then lose another surrogate parent, and then be shipped off to an unfamiliar place where you know nothing and no one.

She saw Ivan wipe away a tear or two as he hugged her goodbye at the train station. “Be a good girl, Natalia,” he whispered before kissing her on the cheek. “I promise you’ll be okay.”

Then the train was whistling and a peculiar woman with stick-straight black hair and a hard-lined mouth called for Natalia to come aboard. 

Ivan squeezed her hand as she moved away. It was the last time she’d ever see him.

She remembered the heavy weight of sorrow and fear that settled at the pit of her stomach as she boarded that train. Remembered the tears that pricked at her eyes when she looked out the window and saw Ivan already walking away. The other ten girls who sat next to her on the train looked as frightened as she felt. None had name badges. All had young, round faces and young, round eyes. All had white knuckles clenching handles of bags, and feet that didn’t quite touch the floor from the high seats of the carriage.

_“I arrived at what was called the Red Room Academy on the 3rd of March, 1937.”_

_“Could you explain for us how the Academy works?”_

_“Worked. Gone now. Disbanded and destroyed after the collapse of the Union.”_

_“Yes, of course. Please continue, Romanova.”_

_“Built by Department X, the Red Rooms were a compound of concrete buildings located on the outskirts of Moscow…"_

After two weeks at the compound, Natalia finally thought she knew her way around the place. There was the main dining hall. The bunk rooms. Briefing rooms. A large, barbed-wire-fenced courtyard. A swimming pool that always had its cover on. A shooting range. Many, many rooms with plenty of bolts on the doors that did not look inviting in the slightest. Numerous training rooms and arenas that she hadn’t yet seen the inside of, and would continue to be shut out of until she finished her basic training. 

She shared a room with three other girls the same age as her. Yelena: a yellow-haired girl from Moscow who always looked angry. Katya: Ukrainian, brunette, quiet. Anya: almost a twin to Natalia, with her red hair and dark eyes. She and Anya shared a seat on the train from Stalingrad to the Academy, and they were becoming fast friends.

Her everyday looked like this:

0600: Awake. Showered. Dressed in the uniform of the Academy - black skirt, white shirt, red tie. Just like a school uniform. Though this was not like any school she had ever attended.

0640: Breakfast in the dining hall with the other girls. There were twenty-eight of them in total. Eighteen were there before Natalia arrived, and they seemed a few years older than her. Teenagers, at least. These girls wore a different uniform. Black slacks and white shirts, hair done up in tight buns. Though they were not much older than Natalia and the ten other girls who arrived on the train with her, they look formidable.

0700-1100: Morning lessons. She and the other girls learned about Russian history, politics, languages, physics, mathematics. The usual subjects one would learn at school. Natalia does well.

1100-1230: Ninety minutes of exercise in the large gymnasium. The girls were split into age groups where they competed against each other in a variety of different activities. They learned gymnastics, tumbling, krav maga, mixed martial arts. Every so often, if the trainers were in a good mood, they may be allowed to play a game of volleyball. 

1230-1330: Break for recess. Lunch is always taken in the dining hall, and then the girls were allowed thirty minutes of ‘outside time’ in the courtyard. The courtyard was nothing special. Sparse patches of grass, a worn line of pavement that runs along the perimeter, barbed wire, no trees. But at least she got to see the sky.

1330-1700: Afternoon lessons. These were different from the first. Natalia and the girls sat through lectures on etiquette, appearance, code-making and breaking, and low-grade weapons training. They were too young for guns but old enough for knives. The first time the instructor brought out a knife for each girl to handle, Natalia was so scared she was going to cut herself, she almost dropped it. Anya _did_ cut herself - a nice, thin slice across the palm. The teacher reprimanded Anya with a rap of the cane over her knuckles, and a sharp word about being careful. A roll of bandages was thrown her way by another student, and Natalia helped her friend wipe up the blood.

1700-1800: Dinner was also taken in the dining hall. Usually something nutritious but bland like bread, potatoes and vegetables, with a tough slab of meat if she was lucky. Natalia sat next to Anya and Katya, fearful of trying to make friends with the other girls. Even Yelena, with whom she shared a room, was cold towards her. The Red Rooms were not supposed to be a place for friendship. There was supposed to be Mother Russia and nothing more.

1800-1930: Directly after dinner, the girls attended psychology class with Professor Pchelintsov. This class was different from the rest. Here, they were not learning anything, but being tested on. The doctors in the class told them that the purpose of the session was to assess their brain’s behaviour and health. One by one, each girl was strapped into a chair and a guard placed into her mouth while a headset bursting with wires was attached to her head. A mask was pulled over her eyes. An IV drip filled with a partially clear and slightly green liquid was inserted into the arm. There were at least ten girls in the room at any one time. A loudspeaker flickered on, and the echo of a deep voice bounced off the walls. Lights switched off. For almost an hour, the girls lay there in the darkness, listening to the voice. The stuff in the drip made her head feel fuzzy and her body light. She was one of the lucky ones - the strange liquid did not have any adverse side effects. For other girls, this was not the case. Natalia heard whispers in the dining hall of an older girl who began to convulse during the class and almost died in her chair, and how the girl hadn’t been seen at the Academy since. She can never remember what the voice says to her in that dark room, but unusual things started to happen within the first few weeks. She was in the shower one morning and began to hum an unfamiliar tune. Her toes pointed reflexively, and she slowly spun under the water, caught in a dance she’d never learnt. Droplets fell on her face and into her eyes, but she blinked them away, and continued to sway to the music she was making. Later, she’d swear she felt the soft scratch of tulle along her thighs.

1930-2000: There is a period of half an hour between psychology class and bedtime where, if indicated by the doctors, girls must go to the infirmary and report any injuries or illnesses they may have sustained over the course of the day. The girls must always be fit and strong. And beautiful. Scars were a no-go. Injuries must be dealt with immediately. There were to be no flaws, no imperfections. They were always accompanied by a guard. No-one was allowed to wander around the compound alone, especially at night. The girls who did not need medical assistance were sent back to their rooms to begin their nighttime routine.

2000-2030: The girls were sent off to bed. They were allocated a toothbrush and paste, a hairbrush, and soap. Anya and Natalia talked in hushed tones after lights out. Anya told her all about her house back home and how beautiful the windowsills looked when snow fell in the spring. She spoke of a little pet bunny called Zip and a brother named Sasha. Once, she mentioned her parents (now dead) and how it felt to leave it all behind. This time, Anya began to cry. Softly, quietly. Natalia reached out a hand across the bed to touch the other girl’s coverlet and whisper, _you’re going to be okay_. Anya always fell asleep first. Natalia lay awake at night thinking of mama and papa and Ivan, all gone in different ways. It would be nice to say she dreamt about them, too, but she didn’t. Natalia never dreamt at all.

This repeated, and repeated, and repeated. Sometimes on the weekends the girls would get to watch a film. Always Russian, always drenched in propaganda. But it was the one fun thing Natalia got, so she enjoyed it. 

This was what the Red Room did: made the Academy just livable enough, just reasonable enough that no one would desperately want to leave. And for the most part, this tactic worked.

It was like this for four years. Then, at thirteen, the real training began.

_“When I was thirteen I was inducted into the Black Widow program.”_

_“And this was…?”_

_“The official Department X sleeper agent training program. We had been preparing for this for years. Only ten girls out of the younger and older groups were chosen to move forwards and become - what they called - Little Widows. The purpose was to create a super-spy for the Kremlin who had been trained her entire life to follow the Motherland. Someone who had been trained to be so loyal that they would never think of defecting.”_

_“And you were chosen, of course?”_

_“Yes. I was nervous when I first attended the Academy. I was fearful of what would happen to me. I didn’t feel like I was made for the job. Not like some of the other girls were. But I never made mistakes. I followed the rules. I became a very good student. I always did what was required of me. I was easy to train. I was desirable. That’s why they chose me.”_

Anya, Yelena and Natalia were among the few girls selected for further training in the Widow program. Katya was not. She is never seen by Natalia again. It was the first time she lost a friend, but certainly not the last. There would only be one Widow, after all. 

For seven years, Natalia’s life was training, and training, and training.

Weapons handling. Martial arts. Code-breaking. The art of seduction. And always the voice in the echoey room and the drip, drip, drip of the IV. 

On some special days, prisoners from gulags outside the city are brought in for the girls to practice on: knife-throwing, throat-cutting, garroting, target practice. The first few times Natalia witnessed the murder of one of these prisoners with wind-burnt faces and calloused hands, she felt as if she was going to vomit all over the floor. But then it was her turn to pull the wire tight around the neck of a middle-aged woman with dead-blank eyes, and she did not hesitate. 

Natalia pushed too deep and the garrote not only strangled the woman, but pierced the skin of her neck. It was horrific, but watching thick red blood stream down her shirt sent a rush of adrenaline through Natalia’s body, sizzling, electric. A strange and twisted fascination with the dying human body. She was reprimanded by her trainer for drawing blood while suffocating the prisoner, and she did not do it again.

This did not mean that Natalia developed some kind of sick thrill for killing. Her training and her work were neatly compartmentalised into locked boxes in her brain, only open for memories to go in, never to come out. Part of her training was to learn how to do this. To detach herself. 

Assassins with emotions were the walking dead.

For these reasons, relationships with anyone - woman or man - are forbidden for the Little Widows. That was not to say that rape was unheard of. Natalia had heard the stories. Young women being caught out of bed late at night and taken advantage of by a guard who didn’t understand basic human decency. Natalia just hoped (and prayed, to whatever kind of god) that it would never be her in such a situation.

(Thankfully, she guessed, there wouldn’t be children born of those rapes. All girls were sterilised on their fifteenth birthdays.)

Of course, the Academy did not consider the sexual favours - the ‘honey traps’ - the Widows were expected to give as part of their missions to be non-consensual. Those things became consensual as soon as these girls stepped foot in the compound, as soon as they gave up their rights to become assassins. Sex with traitorous dukes in mansions bought with dirty money; letting murderous politicians cop a feel after a state dinner; lying there and taking it as a businessman secretly dealing with American arms manufacturers plowed himself into her; whispering filthy words into a political journalist’s ear as he jacked himself off. All while wearing a microphone to record the secrets these men spill when their defences are down in a post-coital haze, and more often than not ending with a slit throat.

This was the difference between training as a young girl and training as a teenager: they began to be sent on espionage missions.

Always with their handlers, disguised as other people in a party or bystanders on the side of the road. Sometimes, a few girls would be sent on a mission together - like when a burlesque club in Paris that was frequented by members of the French state needed to be infiltrated.

But usually, it was Natalia on her own. Spying down from balconies. Laughing into her drink while she slipped a pill into someone’s glass. Taking aim through a stained-glass window in a church. Covering up blood-tinged snow with handfuls of dirt.

She became used to it all. Immune. She forgot to be scared of things.

A few weeks before her twentieth birthday, Department X cut the Widow program in half.

Only five girls remained.

Anya, Yelena, Nadia, Katrina and Natalia.

Who would become the Black Widow?

_“Can you tell us what happened when the program split into five girls?”_

_“The Academy was never meant to produce twenty-eight agents. It was always meant to create one: the Black Widow. The girls who didn’t make the cut sometimes went off to work in other sectors of the KGB, or even, if they were young enough, had their memories wiped and were sent home. I know that some - those girls who were disobedient - were murdered. But I don’t know how many. All I know is that by the time I turned twenty, life at the Academy had become even more rigid and structured than before. There was no free time. Training became much more specialised and specific. Nothing that could be considered fun. We were so far along in our training that the Kremlin assumed we would never defect. And we never thought that either.”_

_“And was it at this time you encountered the Winter Soldier?”_

_“Yes. This was when I met the Winter Soldier.”_

**Author's Note:**

> come and follow me on tumblr @jjmaybank to rant about how bucky and nat should have been together in the MCU xoxo


End file.
